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Welcome back to my blog series on the (CS) academic job market based on my experience in 2021-2022. In the last post, I shared a bit about my experience preparing for the market and assembling/submitting applications. In this third post, we will focus on preparing for screening interviews and starting the job talk.

So at this point, applications are underway, and maybe you’re hearing back for screenings or even full interviews! Congratulations, and on to the next stage!

Screenings:

What are screening interviews?

Screening interviews are usually a bit shorter (say, ~30 minutes) and take place over video call, usually with 2-4 interviewers asking you questions. Often, these questions are uniform amongst all interviews the search committee is conducting. This is where they will ask questions such as: 

• Why are you interested in our school?

• What is your research about?

• What is your vision over the next few years?

• What courses would you design/teach?

• How would you contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion?

I highly encourage you to reference other great resources for a longer list of common interview questions (1, 2, 3) (and before panicking at the number of examples in these links, please note that I tried to use these as a reference point and focused on some of the questions I found especially challenging). The ones I listed above were the ones I encountered most commonly.

Screening Format

While the screenings almost always included a round of questions, some took a different form for me. For example, I was asked in some cases to prepare a 5-minute/10-minute/20-minute talk. Some of these talks were pre-recorded and submitted, while others were live with interviewers. In some of these cases, I was given guidelines of what to include in the presentation, or I was asked to give a conference talk or existing presentation. In several cases, I reached out to the person who invited me for the screening for clarification via email ahead of time, or even during (offering to expand more details on any aspect they were most interested in). I refer you to the upcoming sections on the job talk for suggestions on what to include (as long as you still adhere to the guidelines!), and tips on practicing. 

Bonus, if you are asked to do a presentation during your screening, the prep work will help you get ready for the full job talk!

Scheduling a Screening

If you’re in the exciting position to be invited for a screening interview, you will need to schedule a time to do it! In my case, there were occasionally options listed in the invitations that I received, while other times, there was a specific date and time offered. There was often some back-and-forth to find a time that worked for everyone involved, so budget for that if you are trying to estimate time for each component of the market.

If you’re in the extremely exciting position to be invited for multiple screening interviews, and/or if you’re balancing both screening interview and full interview invitations, there may be even more coordination. 

I will say that as the schedule filled up, I started to get used to the frequency of interviews, so started scheduling everything more closely together. However, no matter how well you ease into this part of the job search, the randomness of this process can be difficult to navigate, mainly because you never know who you will or will not hear from. For example, a representative of a school might send you an email out of nowhere with a full interview invite, right in the middle of a very busy week of additional screenings. Or, you might spend too much time reflecting on a previous screening and trying to guess if they will invite you back (and eventually, hopefully repeat for the offer stage). 

I think it helps to have some support in navigating the uncertainty, so I encourage you to find a mentor, perhaps your adviser, to talk things through.

I relied on my adviser a lot for advice on scheduling, such as when to start saying no to a screening request because my schedule was full. It was helpful to have someone to help me set boundaries as my schedule filled up, particularly if there was pressure to schedule the interview quickly.

Screening Research 

For each screening interview, I created a physical “cheat sheet” for myself, which I could glance at on my desk if needed. Think of this like a 1-page equation sheet before an exam. This document helped me both gather information ahead of time and highlight key topics to remember during the conversations. Below are a few examples of what I included within these guides. 

• A few unique/exciting resources to help answer the “why us?” question. This might include specific schools or departments I could collaborate with at the university (typically with one or two names of faculty in those units), local nonprofits I could potentially work with (as this aligns very closely with my work in AI for social impact), etc.

• A list of people who I could potentially work with in the department and why they would be fitting collaborators, along with a few keywords or references about their work to jog my memory. 

• A list of specific courses that I could teach at the university, with course titles, numbers, and a few words about why I wanted to/could teach them. 

• Some of the university’s programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion that I could contribute to, and a few ideas on how I could contribute.

• A few key words to help give my research overview (mostly when I was starting screening interviews / if I wanted to highlight specific pieces of research).

• A list of questions that were important to me, such as how much support is given to new faculty, how the department is prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion, etc. I would also ask 1-2 specific questions about specific programs, e.g., “I found xyz really interesting, could you please tell me more about it,” where xyz could be a post-baccalaureate program, master’s program, specific course, specific initiative, specific research, etc. I found these conversations to be especially exciting when I had the good fortune of encountering an interviewer actively working on these initiatives.

Screening Practice

Now that we’ve talked about preparing for the interview by doing research on the school and planning what you might say, are there any key skills to practice? 

I personally didn’t know exactly how to practice before my first interview! In hindsight, I would suggest doing a mock interview with a peer, professor at your university, and/or Career Services expert, where they can ask you some of the questions we discussed above, and you can practice your answers. Here are a few other tips that might be good to practice if possible:

• Be genuine and enthusiastic- Perhaps you are excited about the school itself, and/or the opportunity to speak with new people doing exciting research. Either way, let your interviewers know that you are excited about the opportunity through examples and enthusiasm. You don’t want to waste anyone’s time if you aren’t truly excited, and I think it could backfire if you come across as acting or feigning enthusiasm. 

• Don’t forget to discuss your “hits”- As mentioned in the “Screening Research” section, you may have created a cheat sheet of sorts that highlights some of your top accomplishments and interests. This can act as a good reminder during the conversation. Even if interviewers stuck to a list of questions that didn’t highlight these points, I did my best to bring them up, if possible. For example, if they didn’t ask me about my work in diversity, equity, and inclusion, I tried to ask them about their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and then mention my diversity, equity, and inclusion experience during the conversation that ensued. If they didn’t ask me about potential research collaborators specifically, I would instead try to include that in my response to “why our school?” And so on. I didn’t always do this perfectly, and sometimes it could lead to really long-winded answers if I wasn’t careful (especially listing courses!), but I think overall, it led to good conversations.

• Try to connect with people- Remember that the screening should ideally be a conversation, and it’s very helpful to try to connect with people. There's a great chance you will meet new collaborators and colleagues. To be more specific, although I made a “cheat sheet,” I don't recommend getting lost in it, or, worse yet, going point by point through your CV or statements. Be ready to discuss topics that are a bit informal, or friendly, such as where you are based and where the interviewer is based. And above all, be yourself! 

Thank You’s

A thank you note is a quick communication thanking the interviewers for their time after the interview takes place. While I have heard mixed advice on whether or not to send a thank you note, I ended up sending one email to all of the interviewers after each of my screening interviews. 

In the thank you note, I first thanked everyone for their time, and further included brief summaries of topics we discussed, e.g., my research interests, courses I could teach, etc. I also offered to provide more details if helpful, and in a few cases, added points I didn’t get a chance to mention. I created these emails partially based on a template, but much of the summarization part was customized each time. I tried to send these within a day or two in general. 

While I thought these thank you’s were helpful (they helped me remember what we discussed, for example), the choice to send one is ultimately yours. 

Job talk:

Whether you have a lot of screening interviews or a few, believe it or not, December is a good time to start preparing your job talk. This presentation is a big component of full interviews, so it can be extremely helpful to start getting ready early and allow time for iteration and practice. Here are a few tips from my experience:

How to start/what to include: The main piece of advice that I received while preparing my job talk was that it should balance deep technical contributions and your overall research vision. Great advice, but not always easy to capture! 

I started building my job talk from an existing, short overview presentation (think a doctoral consortium presentation, a short thesis proposal presentation, a few of short project presentations put together- preferably with some connective theme, etc.) and slowly added to and refined it. The first part of the presentation consisted of an overview of my vision and papers, then a fairly deep dive into one of my papers. The rest of the papers I highlighted were a bit higher level and grouped together by theme. 

The end of the presentation highlighted my future vision, which I tailored closely to my work in AI for social impact, with a few examples of potential projects (e.g., open questions or areas) and collaborators. 

I included an outline throughout my talk to highlight sections and make it clear where I was in the overall presentation, and also had a “progress bar” at the bottom of my slides. One or two people during interviews specifically praised this, though I’m sure there are many opinions. The exact contents will of course be tailored to you!

Timing: Keep in mind that the time you will be allotted is likely somewhere between 45-60 mins, with about 10-15 mins for questions. I mostly used the same slides and spoke for 45-50 mins, potentially elaborating a bit more if given 60 mins. I found it helpful to include approximate time goals in my notes section on some of the new section slides (e.g., I should be wrapping up this section around 20 mins), so that I could double check I was on track and skip over some details in later sections if not. Sometimes this could be thrown off a little if there were lots of questions during the talk, but in general, they were helpful to stay on track.

Practice: I did about 4 practice talks before my first talk, with the first practice only focusing on the first 20 minutes to really find what worked and what did not (at that point, much did not). As I mentioned before, I also continued to refine until the last time I gave the talk. I tried to jot down questions (especially clarifying questions) I got from people or make note of rough patches as I went so I could try to incorporate these / smooth them out before the next talk.

Overall, I think starting early (i.e., December/January, even if you haven’t heard back from initial applications at all), getting feedback from people in your lab/group, friends, colleagues in your field/different fields, etc., practicing, and formatting in as nice a way as possible are the main things to keep in mind. It’s also probably worth mentioning to remember to be kind to yourself throughout the process, as it is a long one and the beginning (e.g., first practice talk) may not go very well. Otherwise, I refer to other great resources for more tips, and again, encourage you to seek closer mentorship if possible.

Conclusion

With that, good luck as you finish applications and prepare for your interviews! In the next blog post, I’ll discuss full interviews in more detail.

Thanks again for reading! If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know via direct Twitter message (@BondiElizabeth).

Full interviews:

Welcome back to my blog series on the (CS) academic job market based on my experience in 2021-2022. In the last post, I discussed screening interviews and preparing a job talk. Hopefully you have been invited for a full interview, and your job talk is also coming along! One step closer to the finish line!!

In this next post, we will focus on full interviews, which includes the job talk, one-on-one meetings, and (possibly) social gatherings.

Job talk

Many people will say that the job talk is one of the most important parts of the interview, and I would have to agree. So, now that you have prepared and reviewed your slides, what is there to consider about giving the job talk? Here are a few things to be aware of:

Bio/abstract: You will probably be asked to provide a short bio paragraph and abstract ahead of your talk. Some ideas for the bio include your current affiliation(s), research interests, and potentially awards and/or publication venues. Some ideas for the abstract (which for me was about 9 sentences) include your overall research focus in your job talk, key results, how they improve over prior work, etc. In both, I personally included some of my work in diversity, equity, and inclusion as well.

Answering questions: Based on my experience giving job talks, I think that it is very important to be prepared to answer questions both during the talk and at the end. These are a few tips that may help:

• Practice answering some potentially unexpected questions, and possibly use some of the following ideas to help answer them:

  • Speak to what you know / something related you might have explored

  • Ask follow-up or clarification questions in return

  • Mention how your work is a first step towards a larger goal and what you hope to focus on in the future

  • Offer to follow up if you don’t know the answer right away

• Remember that you know your work better than anyone else, and try to have confidence, graciousness, and enthusiasm!

Unexpected things can happen: For example, my computer froze in the middle of one of my virtual job talks, and I ended up having to restart my computer to rejoin. I also had a screening interview where my Internet cut out. As a result, it may help to have a backup plan (e.g., what to skip if you end up spending more time than expected answering questions or handling technical difficulties like these). Thankfully, people were kind and I managed to get back on track!

Customizing: It might help to mention specific potential collaborators for each place you present (not necessarily people, but organizations like nonprofits or other units at the school). I did this sometimes. I also refined the presentation after each job talk based on questions or thoughts I had during it. 

Adjusting to different formats: I gave a mix of remote and in-person talks. This may not apply in the future, but I think it could be good to practice both just in case as we move into a more hybrid environment. Having done both, I think extra energy is helpful if you’re remote - showing some of the audience videos on your screen may help with that - and if you’re in person, remember to make eye contact and keep track of time. 

One-on-ones

The other major portion of the full interview is one-on-one meetings with people in the department, and possibly beyond. These meetings provide the opportunity to converse with many fascinating people!

Quick logistics points: One-on-ones will typically take place over the course of a day or two and last approximately 30 minutes each, so there are often on the order of about 10+. Also, it may vary, but you are often assigned a faculty host (someone in the department, possibly in a related area of study) and/or administrative professional, who will help arrange these. They may ask for a list of faculty you would especially like to meet, in which case I typically tried to provide 2-4 names. Then, they will work on the schedule behind the scenes, and you will most likely receive it ahead of your interview. Feel free to follow up with your contact if you don’t receive it a few days in advance.

How to prepare: I’m very grateful I was able to meet so many people, but it can be tricky to keep track of who everyone is, especially if you have more than one full interview. In hopes of having unique and meaningful conversations with everyone, I tried to learn more about each person and write down some questions for them, e.g., about a paper or two they worked on, points of potential collaboration, their role in the department, courses they teach, etc. I created a dedicated page in a notebook to jot down a few reminders surrounding these conversation topics and questions. I took notes on their answers on the rest of that page of the notebook, either during our discussion, in the transition to the next interview, or at the end of the day. 

What to do at the start of the one-on-one: Like all conversations, you never know quite how these one-on-ones will start. An interviewer might have questions and just jump right into those. Or perhaps they want a quick overview of your work, especially if you are meeting before giving your job talk. Some interviewers may even rely on you to do the talking, which makes it helpful to have some questions prepared for them. Again, it’s a challenge to know exactly how one will go about these meetings, so it’s best to be open and prepared. In any case, I think the goal is to have a nice conversation.

What to do at the end of the one-on-one: At the end, I tried to make sure to wish everyone well, thank them for their time, and encourage them to contact me with follow-up questions if they thought of any. I also followed up with them within a day or two if I said I would send a pointer or answer a question after checking for details. I often sent a thank you note to my faculty host.

Who you might meet with: I found the majority of meetings to be with faculty members in the department. I also met with students, deans, department chairs, and people external to the department, to name a few possibilities. 

• Students: Some of these meetings included many students, others had 1-2. I usually started by asking to do a round of introductions, then following the ideas above.

• Deans: This meeting is with the dean or possibly someone in the dean’s office. This was usually an opportunity to talk about tenure or wider questions about the school’s goals. 

• Chairs: Often there is a meeting with the chair. I got the impression that these were typically an opportunity to ask questions about the department as a whole.

• External people: Sometimes, I had the opportunity to ask someone from another department about personal questions, like parental leave, culture, etc. Otherwise, I typically tried to ask these questions in the post-offer phase. I think they are important questions to ask when you have the opportunity, but they can be delicate to ask of people who are evaluating you.

Questions to ask: I had a list of starting questions, divided by role, which I typically tried to customize before each interview. Examples are shown below:

• Examples for professors:

  • What drew you to x school?

  • What is mentorship like for assistant professors?

  • How does the tenure process work?

  • Are there resources to support teaching?

  • Who are your collaborators?

  • What is it like recruiting students, and where do your students go after graduating?

• Examples for student discussions:

  • Why did you choose x school? Why your adviser?

  • Do you feel supported by your department?

  • Do you like the city/town?

  • Do you collaborate w/ other students, professors, departments?

• Examples for dean’s meeting:

  • What are the aspirations of the university/school? 

  • Can you tell me about the rank and tenure process?

  • What programs do you have to support diversity, equity, and inclusion?

• Examples for chair meeting:

  • What is the timeline of the search (especially mention offer deadlines)?

  • What are your plans for growing the department in the next few years?

  • Can you tell me more about the PhD recruiting process?

  • What programs do you have to support diversity, equity, and inclusion?

  • Can you tell me about the rank and tenure process?

Bonus Round- Social Gatherings

In addition to the job talk and one-on-one meetings, you may have a social hour or dinner scheduled. While this often takes place in a restaurant or conference room, it may also take place virtually. These events were a great opportunity to get to know people and/or ask questions. Your interviewers may also be trying to see if you’re a nice potential colleague. 

For me, many conversations included discussing living in the area (e.g., fun things to do, regions where people live, what restaurants they enjoy, etc.). Sometimes people asked me questions about what I liked to do for fun, etc.

I had a few backup questions in mind, just in case. Here are some examples:

• What’s your favorite part about x region?

• About where do you live?

• What do you enjoy doing for fun?

• What was the most surprising part of starting as faculty?

• Are there any TV/books/movies you’ve enjoyed recently or are on your list? 

Main Takeaways

• Try to have fun and get to know people

• Be respectful and kind

• Thank people for their time

The people you are meeting during these interviews will be potential colleagues, mentors, collaborators, or even letter writers, whether you join that school or not.

Conclusion

With that, good luck as you continue interviewing! The next blog post will be the last, discussing decision time and lessons learned.

Thanks again for reading! If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know via direct Twitter message (@BondiElizabeth).

Welcome back to my blog series on the (CS) academic job market based on my experience in 2021-2022. In the prior post, I shared my experience and suggestions surrounding full interviews. In this fifth and final post, we will focus on offers, negotiation, visits, making your final decisions, and lessons learned from the overall job search experience.

If you have been reading these blogs in conjunction with your own job search, then you are hopefully at the finish line! The offer step, an exciting part of this long journey, is extremely important, so let’s dive in.

Verbal vs. written offers:

After a successful full interview, you may receive a verbal offer (maybe via phone or Zoom call), which is an informal way to let you know to expect a formal written offer. The person calling you, possibly a dean or department chair, may sketch out some terms or ask you for a wishlist to help them craft an exciting written offer. These verbal offers are not official, so if you can, it’s always a good idea to wait for something formal in writing before making any decisions.

A written offer typically comes in the form of an offer letter, which is an official, signed document from a university representative, such as the department chair or dean. The offer letter highlights the details of your potential role, such as expectations around teaching, and everything that the hiring organization is offering to you as an incoming faculty member. At the end, you will sign an offer letter to signify that you formally accept a position.

Offer terms:

Let’s talk more about the offer terms. Offers may vary quite a bit between universities. In general, in the US in CS, they traditionally include:

• A 9-month salary (meaning, you’re paid a salary for the academic year, not summer)

• A (few) year(s) of summer salary so you don’t need to worry about requesting that funding from grants right away

• Benefits, such as healthcare and/or moving support 

• Other details like start date, initial appointment length (for tenure track, you might get something like 3 years before a review, then another 3 years or so before you apply for tenure), etc.

The letter will also include information specific to your lab and research. This will often come in the form of a startup package consisting of funds from the university, with the idea being that you will need to have funding to start hiring students, buying equipment, and doing research in general. It may also include lab space. The specific details of this component may vary between schools and fields. For example, some schools may provide a lump sum, some may provide a lump sum specifically for students and another for equipment, some may tell you that you have student support for 2 students for 2 years and a lump sum for equipment, etc.

It will contain an expiration date as well, after which time the offer is no longer valid and you no longer have the option of accepting. If you're in the fortunate position of having an offer and it has a tight deadline before other interviews or decisions, you may want to consider telling the other schools, so they can potentially try to speed up their decision-making process, or consider requesting an extension of the tight offer deadline. Note that these accommodations are not always possible.

Starting the conversation:

As I alluded to above, many universities asked me for a wishlist to help them write the offer letter, especially the startup package component. In case it helps you assemble your initial wishlist, my equipment wishlist included some of the following items: quadcopters, GPU laptop, GPU desktop, lab monitors/mouse/keyboard/printer, my laptop, student laptops (if not provided), furniture (if not provided), funding for human subject experiments. You may be asked to provide cost estimates for each item, which I omit here since they are likely to change.

This will depend on your field and research, of course. If you’re in a different field, it could help to ask someone in your field for their wishlist or offer letter to help you assemble yours. 

Second visits:

If you are in this wonderful position of receiving an offer, I highly recommend requesting to visit a school (again), preferably in-person, before making your final decision. These trips are usually referred to as second visits. You could make this request after a verbal or written offer, but keep the offer deadline in mind.

Other tips:

• Schedule a real estate meeting: talk with a real estate agent and ideally tour around with them. I found this to be very helpful, as I cared a lot about where I would potentially live for a long time. Most schools helped arrange this for me or provided me with contact details for me to arrange a meeting.

• Bring family members, if applicable: if someone will be moving for this big decision, it’s likely helpful for them to see the area and maybe meet a few people, too. In my case, I didn’t usually tell schools my partner was joining, as we drove to visit places together and my partner attended the real estate meetings with me, but otherwise explored while I did meetings. In at least one case, the host of a dinner invited him when I mentioned he was in town as well.

• Ask your remaining questions: I started to ask some more (specific) questions about living situations, whether I could defer to do a postdoc, questions about the offer, personal questions (e.g., maternity leave policies) if I hadn’t yet, etc. at this stage. Please see the prior blog post and the decision-making section below for a few more ideas on questions to ask.

• Don’t be afraid to follow up: After I did a few second visits, sometimes more questions arose. It was really helpful to be able to send emails or even video call with people I met before to ask these follow-up questions.

Decision-making:

If you have several offers, making a final decision can be a daunting task. I’m extremely happy and grateful that I was in this position, but it was difficult to make choices with so many amazing potential colleagues, schools, and locations. While this choice will come down to your unique situation and needs, I will provide a few tips that really helped me in making a decision:

• Pros/cons lists: I made a spreadsheet that had a few categories of things I cared about (e.g., salary, support to new faculty, tenure process, cost of living, DEI efforts, and more) and was sure to ask each school for input. Once I received their answers during interviews/second visits, I placed them within the spreadsheet and compared the data from each school. Personal questions: It may help to sit down and ask yourself questions about your future at each school. Where do you envision living, do you want to buy a house in the area and when, what will your commute be like to your lab/office, do you have family nearby/easy to travel to, etc.? I thought about a lot of these questions before making my final decision. In the end, I think if one is struggling personally in some way, it will be hard to do good work, no matter how amazing a department may be - and there are many amazing departments out there! I share this perspective here in case it’s helpful, but encourage you to find your own balance.

• Open challenges: What is preventing you from accepting a position? Someone asked me this question when I got to my final choices, and it helped me move from being stuck and endlessly going over and over my pros/cons list for each school, to doing something productive, which was to go to each place I was considering, and ask people there if they could help me overcome the obstacles to accepting their offer. For example, if you are concerned about the living situation, you may be able to schedule more time with a real estate agent to brainstorm. Another example could be asking a faculty member about a department-level concern. This may also be a helpful way to think about negotiation of the offer terms, e.g., a chair or dean may be able to address any concerns about your offer. 

I think this process is difficult for everyone involved. My suggestion is to continue being as gracious as possible and do your best!

Negotiating:    

Related to the point on open challenges above, perhaps you are nearing your decision, but feel something is missing from your offer, perhaps due to a more favorable competing offer or a new concern. There might be room for changes through negotiation. I’m probably not the best person to ask for negotiating advice - there are often courses and seminars fully dedicated to the art - so perhaps it’s beneficial to briefly mention my experience, and encourage you to seek other advice as well. 

I chose to focus mostly on providing wishlists and competing offer terms to deans/chairs at the verbal offer stage, and left negotiation until the very end when I was fairly sure of my choice. My goal in doing this was to avoid a situation where someone worked to accommodate a request, only for me to decline. So, I made one round of final requests, e.g., officially deferring my start date, and then let schools know. 

Lessons learned:

Congratulations on getting through this experience! It may be helpful to take a moment to reflect on the journey overall, which may have lasted from August to May, or maybe even longer. While I found the process to be challenging at times, I feel that this experience solidified a few helpful lessons for me:

• First, I think the job search helped me improve my networking skills and how I presented my research/answered questions about my work. I believe these sharpened skills will help me as I prepare for the next step in my career. 

• Second, I learned the importance of being honest about commitments. The job search was one of the first times where I felt like I needed to (and therefore could) say no to things. I definitely didn’t do this perfectly, but I’m hopeful that when I was up front with my availability, others were able to find opportunities and/or more available people to work with. Limiting my commitments also allowed me to focus on the task at hand without feeling like I was letting anyone down. I hope to bring this forward with me. 

• Third, and this may seem very obvious, but I realized that organization is extremely helpful for saving time. Whether it was going back through old work to package it into my talk or materials, scheduling various meetings and talks, actively preparing  for interviews, etc., I  quickly learned and implemented new processes for better documentation and planning, which I hope to continue in the future. I’m currently experimenting with even more new tools to help!

• Finally, I realized how helpful time off can be to recharge and get ready for a new adventure. I took some time off before and after the search, which was extremely helpful. I intend to encourage myself and others to make some more time outside of work in the future.

Conclusion:

Thank you all so much for bearing with me through this very long discussion of my experience on the job market! I hope it includes some helpful tips for you, and I wish you the very best in concluding this exciting, nerve-wracking, amazing journey. Please feel free to write to me if you have any suggestions or additional resources that might help others. While I’m sure that aspects of the search will change, I hope that my experiences are able to help down the road. 

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who has helped me along my journey. I’d especially like to thank my adviser for his invaluable feedback and advice throughout this journey, including on this blog series, and I’d also like to extend a special thank you to my partner for editing this blog series and creating the graphic. Thanks again!